23 February 2015

Here’s a good quote from George Eldon Ladd on the Kingdom of God and new creation, from the last pages of his Theology of the New Testament…

The final state of the Kingdom of God is a new heaven and a new earth. This expresses a theology of creation that runs throughout the Bible. The Old Testament prophets picture the Kingdom of God in terms of a redeemed earth. This is described in terms of a new heaven and a new earth even in the Old Testament... [A] fundamental theology underlies these expectations, even though they must be clarified by progressive revelation: that man’s ultimate destiny is an earthly one. Man is a creature, and God created the earth to be the scene of his creaturely existence. Therefore, even as the redemption of man in the bodily aspect of his being demands the resurrection of the body, so the redemption of the very physical creation requires a renewed earth as the scene of his perfected existence. Man never ceases to be God’s creature. The New Testament does not outstrip this theology… Jesus spoke of the regeneration of the world, and Paul spoke of the redemption of the created order. The new earth of Revelation 21 is the final term in revelation of how this redemption is to take place…

And so the Bible ends, with a redeemed society dwelling on a new earth that has been purged of all evil, with God dwelling in the midst of his people. This is the goal of the long course of redemptive history. Soli Deo gloria!

20 February 2015

Over the past few months, from time to time, I’ve been using the phrase ‘Living Between Two Worlds’ to highlight and to teach the distinctively Reformed view that the world in which we live is God’s world, is good and is the subject of God’s renewal in new creation. We live in a fallen world, yes, but it is God’s good world that is fallen. New creation has begun in the Church through Jesus the Messiah. This new creation brings redemption, and we await the complete renewal and redemption of all creation. This view is not just doctrine; when grasped, it transforms our lives and mission as God’s people.

I’m mining Paul and the Faithfulness of God, N.T. Wright’s magnum opus on Paul for gems for my thesis at the moment. Here’s a couple of quotes on The New World and the Old that I needed to share…

It is this robust version of the Jewish monotheistic doctrine of creation that underlies Paul's equally robust affirmation that the present world of space, time and matter is itself good. That is why marital union is good in itself (1 Corinthians 7), why all meat is good in itself, even if offered to an idol (1 Corinthians 8, 10), why all time, all days, are basically the same in the sight of the one God (Romans 14.5). Here we see the creational element of Paul's inaugurated eschatology. One might have imagined that, if the new creation had already been launched, everything about the old one would become not only irrelevant but somehow shabby, tarnished, shown up as in some sense actually evil, so that Paul would be advocating escape. Not at all. For Paul the old creation has, of course, been relativized. It no longer assumes cultural, or even cultic, significance. But it remains good, and can be enjoyed if received with thanksgiving. The new world, already launched with Jesus' resurrection, reaffirms the essential goodness of the old one even as it relativizes its ultimate significance. As with the biblical texts on which he drew, Paul understood the entire created order not as a static entity to be observed but as part of a narrative, a narrative which had now, he believed, entered its long-awaited new phase. PatFoG, 1368.

And again, Wright emphasises the two poles of Paul’s eschatology of creation: continuity (God’s covenant commitment is to this creation) and discontinuity (this creation will be renewed, and set free from everything that spoils it)…

For Paul, the renewal of the existing creation was just as important as the renewal of the existing creation. Without the second, one would be trapped in a world of inevitable entropy. Without the first, the idea of new creation would collapse into some kind of gnosticism. PatFoG, 1372.

Firstborn

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.

For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father's good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. (Colossians 1:15-20)

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